The Pacific (50 page)

Later that day Mike's turn came to take the Helldiver into combat. He led the second division and the squadron's XO led the first.
⁷⁹
The target was the airfield on the tiny island of Peleliu, 112 miles away. On the map, the airfield's runways looked like a giant number "4" etched into the base of an irregular- shaped island. The Beasts were being loaded with a thousand-pound bomb in the bomb bay and a hundred-pound bomb under each wing. The smaller bombs had an instantaneous fuse setting, to increase the splatter. The larger one had a .1-second delay to give it more destructive power against walls. Visibility was unrestricted. Eight fighters and seven torpedo planes would accompany them. The enemy had demonstrated an effective antiaircraft defense. Pilots in the ready rooms, as they began to copy down important information onto their Ouija Boards, must have begun to pay particular attention to the location of the rescue submarine. The navy had started placing a sub in the vicinity of the strike zone to rescue downed flight crews.

Mike found the mission less than challenging. "Now here I am, been through two squadrons that I trained, and they give us a little target like Palau." After years of training to hit moving ships, the prospect of hitting an airfield and its hangars made him laugh. "My God," he exclaimed, "miss an airfield?" The call came to man their planes.

Up the stairs and out on the flight deck, the pilots walked to the stern. The wind carried the astringent odors of aviation fuel and exhaust. The Helldivers had been jammed on the stern, their wings in the up position to make room for more. The Hellcats and Avengers took off before him, as did the XO's division. Moving up to the launch position, he pushed a button and the wings came down. The plane captain and another deckhand made sure they were locked. Mike taxied forward; the nose of the Beast obstructed his forward view.

He grew nervous as he got to the spot. Sure, the SB2C Helldiver had a lot more horsepower than his old Dauntless, but the air group commander and Captain Browning "took it away from you by giving you a shorter deck." They wanted more planes spotted on the deck ready for takeoff. More planes on the rear of the flight deck in turn pushed the spot from which Mike would begin his takeoff farther forward. He did not like the idea that they had figured exactly "how many feet to take you off so you didn't sink. . . ." The run-up of the engine sounded fine. At full power the plane shook with pent- up energy. The flight director pointed to the bow and ducked. Mike released the brakes, and the Beast rolled forward. Gaining speed, the tail came up level behind him, allowing him to see straight ahead. The edge looked too close. When he cleared the bow of the ship, the aircraft dropped. He realized he was right; "it was maybe 20 feet off of the deck before you got flying speed." As quickly as possible, Mike made a gentle turn to starboard to make the wind better for the pilot behind him. He also had to unbuckle himself so he could reach way down by his feet to pull the handle to retract the landing gear.

Circling, he noticed two other carriers also in the midst of a launch a few miles away. He noted some heavy cumulus clouds. The Hellcats and Avengers circled with him. Only nine of the twelve Helldivers scheduled joined up--more technical problems--and off they went. The flight to the target took less than an hour. The leader had to find the right tiny island amid a great scattering of tiny green islands and atolls. It took a little concentration. They came in an endless variety of shapes, surrounded by the pale blue of shallow water and white coral reefs. The main harbor on the main island was easy to spot: burning Japanese ships filled the water and U.S. planes filled the sky.

The XO led his strike in from the northeast. As he approached the target, he took the planes into a shallow dive to gain speed. The wolves adjusted the settings on their engines and props, then trimmed their planes for the dive. They were at about ninety-five hundred feet when they aligned themselves along Peleliu's northeast- to-southwest runway. The great white 4 stood out clearly amid the green canopy. Micheel peeled off and pointed his plane at the airfield below. As his airspeed indicator slid toward three hundred knots, a fighter plane went roaring by him, strafing the ground to help slow the enemy's AA guns. His speed increased with every second. "I'm going down in, on my diving run, and I'm maybe about 4,000 feet. Pow! I feel something hit the airplane. I look out and . . . my starboard wing's on fire." Mike thought he might as well finish the dive at this point; "maybe it [the fire] will go out." At about two thousand feet he released his thousand-pound center bomb and pulled back on the stick with both hands. Gravity gave his body a tight squeeze.

"When I pull out and head out to sea, I can see the fire has gone out, and my aileron wire is unraveling. . . ." He might lose control at any moment. He got on the intercom. "Prepare to ditch at sea! We're going to land next to the survival submarine."

"Oh, sir," John Hart, the gunner, protested, "I hope we can get back to the ship. I've been shot and I'm bleeding and I can't reach the life raft and I can't swim. So I hope we can go back to the ship." Mike looked over and saw "a great big hole in the wing." He could see the aileron wire flipping around. If it snapped, he might not be able to slide his plane smoothly to a stop near the rescue sub. On the other hand, his gunner was wounded. If the landing went wrong--which was likely during a water landing--John might not make it out before the plane sank.

"Well, we'll try to get back," he said into the intercom. "I don't know if that aileron is going to hold or not. If it goes and I can catch it with my rudder I'll be all right." He turned toward the carrier. The flight back lasted most of an hour, until the welcome sight of the task group hove into view. Mike called down to his carrier to let them know he had a wounded gunner. He listed the damage to his aircraft, so they would know how serious it was. His request for immediate clearance to land, however, was denied. "Wait." Then a pause, and then the controller said, "Go to five thousand feet . . . and dog." From Mike's damage report,
Hornet
's air controller knew it was likely he would crash on the deck. So Mike would circle the ship until all the others landed and a large crash barrier was raised.

As he circled, Mike had time to think. He had plenty of gas. As long as his aileron held he was fine. As serious as the hole in his wing was the loss of hydraulic fluid, which the fire had consumed. Without his hydraulics, Mike's plane would lack landing flaps, which give the wings more lift at slow speeds. Hydraulics also powered his landing gear, so he would have to crank his wheels down by hand. Once the wheels went down, he had to land on the carrier. He could not land in the water because the wheels and struts would catch the water and slam the nose of the plane into the water. In the ensuing collision, the plane would often flip over on its back before sinking. A new concern shook him: What if only one wheel locked into place? Mike got on the radio. "You didn't forget I'm here?"

"No, sir," the controller replied, "you're going to be the last plane to land. We're going to put up the barricade for you." In order to land, Mike had to know the speed at which the plane would stall. A stall meant total loss of control over the aircraft. He began to experiment, slowing down to just the moment of stall, then catching it and speeding up again, and so on. He wanted to get a precise figure, knowing that he would have to add in some speed to compensate for the extra drag created when he lowered the wheels. "I figure out, well, I got to go about twenty knots faster when I come in than I do normally." After a time the call came and Mike brought the Beast into the landing pattern. He lowered his wheels as he flew the downwind leg.

Making a classic carrier approach, Mike flew alongside the carrier, with it headed in the opposite direction off to his left, or port. He lowered his tail hook. "I know I'm fast. When I get right up there to the ship, I . . . turn my wing up so that those guys on the bridge that are watching can see the hole in my wing!" Even before Mike could begin to make the final turn to come up behind the ship, the LSO waved him off. "So then he gets on the radio and he tells me, 'You're way too fast. You got to slow it down.'" Mike circled the ship at low altitude, setting up for another pass, trying to find the right spot between stall speed and excessive speed. Once again, though, the LSO waved him out of the groove. He told Mike over the radio to take a longer approach. Instead of making a ninety-degree turn off the stern of the ship, Mike would fly straight and level toward it, just like an airplane landing at an airfield. A land-based plane, though, landed on its front wheels; a carrier plane landed by catching its rear hook. Placing a plane in the attitude to catch an arresting wire meant that the nose blocked the pilot's vision forward and the wings blocked his vision below. This was why carrier pilots normally made a sharp turn to land--the turn dropped the port wing and allowed them to see the deck and the LSO until almost the last second. No turn meant no forward vision.

The LSO, an experienced aviator who had undergone advanced training, knew exactly what he was asking of the pilot. Thankfully this pilot had a thousand hours of air time and had spent a month of high stress on Guadalcanal. Mike made the long, straight approach from the stern. "My Landing Signal Officer just let me have my speed, but he just cut me sooner, so I would glide further before I hit. Normally when you come aboard, you're almost over the end of the carrier deck and he gives you a cut . . . you're right there: bang, bang! But this time he gave me a cut way out, and I could see the stern of the ship!" At the LSO's cut signal, Mike yanked the throttle back to zero. The engine's roar faded. "Oh, I had to trust him. I can't do anything else. I just got to do what he tells me. He knows what he's doing, that's what he's there for." The Beast glided for a long, quiet moment. The carrier's island rose quickly in the right-hand window. The cut had been timed perfectly and it "plops me right in on the deck." The tail hook caught the wire.

Mike looked up to see the crash fences in front of him flop down. He throttled forward, then climbed out and let the plane handlers take over. A medical team rushed forward and took his gunner, John, below to sick bay. Micheel went to the ready room to be debriefed. After such a feat, a pilot would receive a warm welcome from his squadron. While the ensigns might have been impressed with Lieutenant Micheel's landing, his skipper was impressed that Mike had completed his dive on the target with a burning wing. The other pilots had confirmed that Mike's thousand-pound bomb had "hit almost dead center of the intersection of the two main runways on Peleliu."
⁸⁰
This was the example a division leader set for the men on his wing. The enemy would have a hard time coming after
Hornet
because Mike's first instinct had been to press home the attack. To Campbell, Lieutenant Micheel's "skilled airmanship and courageous devotion to duty in the face of heavy and accurate antiaircraft fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service."
⁸¹

While giving his report Micheel learned that his had not been the only plane to get hit with a burst of AA fire. One other had sustained less damage than his. A third Helldiver had burst into flames over Peleliu. The pilot, John Houston, had rolled it over so he and his gunner could get out quickly. Two parachutes were seen to open. Houston and his gunner landed in the water a hundred yards off the enemy's shore, too close to be rescued.
⁸²

"After I had had my debrief, I went down to the hangar deck and looked at my airplane." The mechanics had kept the wings down in order to study the damage. "So I got up there and put my head through the hole in the wing, I could turn all the way around, my shoulders could turn all the way around inside that hole." No wonder he had come in a little fast. Up close, he could also see that the SB2C had three cables to control the aileron and only one had been nicked. Even the damaged wire had not unraveled that much; it had only looked that way as it whipped in the wind. Back in the rear seat compartment, the shell that had maimed John had blown off the left handle of his .30-cal machine gun. At that, "I went down to see my gunner and guys were coming out of the sick bay and they said, 'Oh, he's okay, there's nothing wrong with him, he's okay.' "

"What do you mean 'nothing wrong with him'?"

"Well, he just lost his index finger."

"You mean," Mike asked, "he couldn't pull out that life raft because he lost his finger?"

"Well, he was scared. He was in shock. He didn't know what had happened. He was bleeding . . ." Thinking it over, Mike did not blame John for not wanting to attempt a water landing. He had not liked the idea either, but the aileron wire had "scared the daylights" out of him. As the tension eased, he began to laugh at himself. "I thought I was a hotshot. I had this thing all figured out. Then the first thing you know I got a bullet through my wing that set me on fire." He resolved not to be so smug, to understand it could happen to him, regardless of his skill. The first strike of his second combat tour "changed my mind all over again, and then I was always careful, an apprehensive pilot." A little before nine p.m. enemy planes approached the task force. None of them got close to
Hornet
, but the ship stayed at general quarters until eleven p.m., and that cut into everyone's sleep.

When Mike reported to the ready room the next day, he learned that John Hart had resigned from flying. Rear seat gunners volunteered for the job, so they had the right to return to being an ordinary aviation mechanic again. Hart had flown with Mike since August, but one combat mission had been enough. Another airman volunteered and flew with him on a strike at a spot called Corro. The carrier had another busy day, much of it successful. One of the torpedo planes, however, went off the end of the flight deck and crashed into the water.

On the third day of combat, April 1, the air group shifted its attention away from the Palau Islands to Woleai Atoll. Micheel did not participate. During the nine a.m. launch one Beast failed so badly on takeoff that the pilot "essentially taxied off the bow."
⁸³
The plane and her crew disappeared before the guard destroyer could get to them. Both men had wives and children. A second mission against the Woleai cost another Helldiver from AA fire. Before lunchtime, the carriers and their air groups had completed their assignment and set sail for Majuro.